Stealing Our Own Content

I read two interesting articles on Netflix this week, but the one that intrigued me the most, dealt with Canadians streaming the American service. I found it particularly interesting, as we’ve both talked about it in class, and I’ve been doing it for years. The article itself wasn’t all that intriguing, as it really gave no new information, or went very deep into ethics and copyright infringement. At this point, it still appears to be something of a legal black hole. While it breaks Netflix’s terms, they have yet to do anything about it.

The most interesting discussion came in the comments section, where several people brought up the fact that there was Canadian tax-produced content available only on the American Netflix. The general argument made is that it was not piracy, since they were paying for the same content—some of it was just blocked.

This is the interesting debate. Who is controlling our content? And can we even call it our content? Is watching this content unethical, or is blocking the content the unethical thing?

Article
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/21/american-netflix-in-canada-vpn_n_5002916.html